"According to christian storytelling, the animals on earth were created by God on the sixth day. Some animals as we know them now, some have evolved over the years into other creatures. Biologists use a system called taxology to help them determine what kind of animal you see and how you categorize them into fitting groups. This system inspired these symbols and each of them stands for a particular feature. What if you would turn that around and not differentiate animals into groups according to those features, but use the them to create an animal? "
45 symbols is an international project between the college of Falmouth, Hong Kong, Bogota and New York. Every university got the same brief. The 45 symbols brief described that we needed to come up with a theme and with that theme create 45 different black symbols, further interpretation was your own.
The workshop was not a mandatory project, but a project were 20 students started to make their own symbols, fully focusing on shape and connections. As I've gotten the advice that I should focus more on shape instead of relying on colour, I thought this project would be perfect for me. On day one it started with a group session, sketching and brainstorming about what your subject might be. I had the idea that i would want to create a symbol set that would act as a font or either a puzzle, combining different symbols would result in a new kind of language. Or that you could create your own kind of world with those symbols. 
So I started with the idea "God Complex", using information about human beings, maybe characteristics or physical specifications. Combining them would give you a new human being or a stereotype.
When the time came for the second meet-up I had the idea about creating new sorts of animals, like playing god for a day. So that resulted that i got into taxology. I looked at my old biology notes and websites about how biologist specify different kind of animals, and what were the most important features that would help to differentiate wither an animals is a parrot, or a snake. I got to 36 main features that all come back in the resulted design, and 9 supporting features that can help you use your imagination.
I finished and presented the symbols to the group, and five people would be selected in the end to get published in a small edition (and maybe a bigger one when there's funding). And they selected me as one of the participants!
This will result in an exhibition in Cologne, Germany at the 5th of June, publication on the website and blog (which are linked below), and presented in a little book.
For the exhibition the symbols will have to be in an application, so I'm working on an animation to explain the use and combinations of the symbol. Which will be shown in Germany, while I'm still in England, funny enough.
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